Month: February 2016

Grab a cup of coffee, or three. Sit a spell (20 minutes). It’s change your life story time! Before we get started, a little background: Last winter I spent some time navel gazing on small habits and eventually realized that building a healthier closet really echoed a broader longing to create a healthier beauty bag, body, mind, and home. A week after sharing a post on my new-found wellness rituals I stumbled across a curious Japanese book about tidying. Thus began a year long and very dramatic existential expedition of dismantling myself and my stuff, I Heart Huckabees-style. Okay! Great. Over that same period of time, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up has sold something along the lines of 3 million copies to people who have (pardon my French here) physically and metaphysically lost their merde over everything Marie Kondo – from her object philosophies to her adorably specific sock-folding methodology. Illustrated checklists and before and after diaries and critical reviews and shopping guides abound, along with a giddily profane parody, official Martha Stewart guide, …

Have you ever tracked your closet? This weekend I audited all of last year’s clothing purchases, and in the process I realized some really interesting things about my shopping habits in the year that followed the Nothing New Challenge. The results make up this cozy lil’ fireside chat and subsequent outfit – what I’m wearing makes up a few of my most worn items of the year. Other favorites included a trusty Patagonia better sweater, Rocksbox jewels, and everything Everlane. To start, I pulled every new piece of clothing into a spreadsheet with rows for each month, as well as columns for product name, cost, retailer; whether the item broke, was returned, sold, or donated; and whether I wore the item every two weeks, once a week, or less than five total times. My least-worn items were from many different retailers but had a few things in common: most were on clearance or were purchased without knowing detailed fit information, while others were for very specific occasions: swimming, fancy parties, running, getting married. Generally speaking, …